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CPM retains Salt Lake municipality

Rifat Jawaid in Calcutta

In a thrilling electoral battle, which was marred by large scale violence, the Communist Party of India-Marxist succeeded in retaining the Salt Lake municipality. The final result was declared on Sunday.

CPM's Geeta Biswas defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party's Banani Sanyal by a slender margin of 230 votes ensuring that her party formed the board in this satellite township.

Biswas polled 396 votes while Sanyal got 232. Before the re-poll was ordered, she was leading by 93 votes.

The result was held up after an Electronic Voting Machine developed a snag on the day of counting, on June 28. When experts from Andhra Pradesh failed to rectify the fault, the state election commission ordered re-polling in booth 3A of Ward 16. Until then, the Left Front and BJP-Trinamul Congress combines were evenly balanced.

The re-poll was marred by large scale violence with supporters of both combines hurling bombs at each other for hours. As many as 30 bombs were hurled.

Both the Marxists and the Trinamul Congress have charged each other with provoking the violence. While the CPM said two of its leaders were injured when 'Trinamul goons' attacked its supporters, senior BJP leader and Union Telecommunication Minister Tapan Sikdar alleged that he too was attacked by the CPM's armed cadres.

Sikdar said that his party has demanded immediate resignation of state Home Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. "Buddhadeb babu has no moral right to remain in power. What happened today amply indicated that you can never win an election as long as the administration supports the ruling party."

West Bengal Inspector General of Police(Law and Order) Prasun Mukherjee told reporters that police had a tough time in controlling the agitating mob during the re-poll. According to him, the Rapid Action Force had to fire 12 rounds to disperse the violent crowd of CPM and Trinamul-BJP combine supporters. He added that one local CPM leader was injured after being hit by a police bullet. However, no one was arrested.

CPM state secretary Anil Biswas expressed satisfaction over the results and congratulated the electorate for having reposed faith in the Left Front. However, even after having been declared victorious, the snag in the EVM has been keeping Marxist bigwigs on tenterhooks.

The result has come as a shot in the arm for the LF after the relatively dismal performance in the election to the Calcutta municipal corporation.

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